First Outing
by LeoN WiNgsteiN
Summary: Leon and Helena go on their first mission with the B.S.A.A. when a biohazard outbreaks in a small Russian town. Infected!Leon AU
1. Chapter 1

Leon was a little bit too big for the helicopter's small seat, especially with his large, fleshy wings, but none of the other operatives were about to bring it up to him. He was bigger, stronger, and scarier than any one of them. Helena sat across from him, giving him more than a few reassuring glances on the long flight. With them were four other B.S.A.A. agents, fully decked out in combat gear. Helena opted for a lighter setup—she wore only, in additional to her base clothes, a bulletproof vest and a helmet. The outfitters at the B.S.A.A. had insisted that she take more, but she had informed them that she had already defeated multiple biohazards in nothing but standard clothing, so even what she had ceded would be much more than plenty, thank you.

Their mission was simple: an illegal black market bioweapons sale had gone south, creating a spill around the safe house where the deal was going. The safe house was in a small town just about 50 miles outside of Moscow. While the Russian authorities had created and effectively kept up a perimeter, the B.S.A.A. were called in to consult and lead the operation to actually enter the town and find out what happened to the informant the Russians had planted, and recover any information he might have already gotten.

Because the whole mission was low-profile, the B.S.A.A. had decided that it would be an appropriate debut mission for Leon, who had been training with them for a few months already. He sat in his seat, not strapped in like the rest of the agents, because the straps didn't exactly fit across his body. He instead used his claw-like hands to grip the arm rests with an iron vice, and he used his wings to make sure he didn't shift around the cabin. He was aware of how the other agents felt around him, apprehensive to be working with a bioweapon, the very kind of thing they were working to combat, but he did not care. He knew that he could fight the evil of bioterrorism, and he was prepared to do that in any physical state that he found himself in.

"We're touching down," said the pilot, his voice coming through the earpieces of all of the agents, even Leon, who had a specially crafted earpiece to fit his mutated features. "We'll be outside of the biohazard zone. You connect with the authorities containing the perimeter, and they'll tell you where to go from there." The helicopter was descending, and through the windows, the agents could see the dark outside, and the intermittent lights of the checkpoints around the perimeter around the town. The town itself was completely dark. "Good luck."

The agents hustled out of the helicopter as soon as it touched ground in the field, keeping their heads down until they were clear of the rotors. Leon came second-to last, lumbering out and running, crouching down to avoid the blades of the helicopter, and Helena came out behind. She flashed a thumbs-up to the pilot, who pulled up and away from the landing site, soon becoming just another light in the sky, among the abundant country stars.

A Russian officer broke from the small group at the perimeter line and came to meet them, giving a nervous look to Leon, who stood much taller than the other B.S.A.A. agents. Leaving Leon behind the others, Helena went to the officer, who greeted them in English. "Hello," he said, holding out his hands in welcome. "Thank you for coming—we have been waiting for you. But what is…" The officer cut his sentence off, glancing up at Leon.

"That's Special Agent Kennedy," said Helena, taking the man's hand and shaking it. "My name is Special Agent Harper, and we're here to enter the biohazard zone." She released the man's hand. He seemed off-put by her forwardness, and shot another glance at Leon before refocusing his attention on another of the B.S.A.A. agents, who began speaking.

"I am Captain Crawford," said the man, extending a hand to the officer. "We've been told that we're to extract any information about this outbreak, and any additional information that may have been retrieved by your undercover agent. Am I correct?"

"You are," replied the officer. "The safe house is located near the center of the town." A flick of his eyes to Leon, and back to Captain Crawford. "As far as we know, they met above the barber shop there, just off of the town square. There are only a few roads in the town—most of the residents work on farms surrounding the town." He gestured to the field they were standing in. "Our agent had with him a brown leather briefcase that we are to assume had valuable information in it."

"And we will keep an eye out for it," said Captain Crawford. "At what time will the sanitation occur?"

"Eight o'clock AM," replied the officer. "We pull out at seven. Though the weapons are not nuclear, we have been urged to clear the area around the town for a few miles to ensure safety." His eyes flitted to Leon, and back. "We have already evacuated the locals, but we will be leaving with or without you at the time of sanitation. We have a perimeter, but we cannot risk the infection spreading."

"Affirmative," replied Captain Crawford. "Is there anything else?"

"As far as our tests can conclude, this outbreak is caused by the T-virus, not the C-virus, as we had initially feared."

"Good," said Captain Crawford. "Well then, we're going in. Boys?" The agents moved forward, on cue, to the perimeter. Crawford followed them, and Leon brought up the rear. Helena hung back for a moment.

"Officer," she said evenly, looking him in the eye. "Special Agent Kennedy is a valuable asset to the B.S.A.A., but at this time, he's being kept confidential. A trade secret, as it were." The man did not reply. He just stared back at her. "What I am saying is, I hope that you and your comrades over there can keep it under wraps that he is a part of this mission, at least until after sanitation tomorrow morning. _Ja_?"

"Yes ma'am," the officer, shaken.

Helena smiled. "Good," she said, and jogged away to catch up with her team.


	2. Chapter 2

The team stuck together, moving as a solid unit through the streets of the blackened town. There was a slight bite to the air in the night, and the wind swept across the neighboring fields, tunneling down the streets and bringing the chill of the Russian night to the agents. Captain Crawford took the lead, followed by two of the other men, then Leon, with Helena and another agent taking up the rear.

Leon glanced around him, his yellowish eyes adapted to this sort of night mission. He could see, in a faint grayscale, the small buildings and houses around them, and he could see the fountain in the town square a couple hundred yards away from them. He could also see, better than the other agents, the figures that began to lumber toward them from the center of town, and from the dark alleys between the small, pitch-dark buildings.

"There are infected ahead," said Leon, his voice, an attempt at a whisper, coming out in a low, gruff growl. The agents around him raised their guns. They crept forward a bit more, slower now, poised and ready for the danger ahead.

Leon himself was tense. He walked his wings along behind him, folded, and held his claws at the ready. It had been decided back at the B.S.A.A. headquarters that it would be useless to give him a gun—they had no guns that he could effectively operate with his mutated hands. Instead, he worked to learn effective ways to use his claws to his advantage. He had resisted the idea at first, but after working with some of the hand-to-hand combat trainers at the B.S.A.A., Leon had come around to the notion of being the weapon he was—but for the right reasons.

A moan came from the darkness ahead of them. "Stand ready!" called Captain Crawford, his eyes scanning the darkness ahead for movement. "On my command, we rush to the town square ahead. Try to locate the barber as we go. Quick and easy." They continued to creep forward, the sounds of the shifting and lumbering infect all around them. Their steps made small impacts of the rough, almost cobblestone road, and Helena caught herself holding in a breath. She released it, feeling silly.

"Go!" shouted Crawford, and the whole group began to run forward. Now, they started to encounter the zombified infected, who were lumbering toward them, arms outstretched. The first shots ripped through the infected closest to the group, bullets from two separate guns catching it in the gut and the face. The zombie dropped to the ground.

The group fanned out a bit, so they could all see ahead of them as they ran. More shots rang out, the bursts lighting up the night in bright flashes. The zombies didn't stand a chance, hitting the ground as the bullets ripped through them. Leon took up the rear, single-handedly holding off any straggling zombies that tried to attack from behind. With a long sweep of his wing or a swipe of his claw, he easily dispatched the undead, knocking them away from his teammates.

They burst out, in a flurry of spattered, undead flesh and gunfire into the town square. The windows of the buildings surrounding the square reflected the bright flashes of the gunfire, and the agents were given more room to maneuver. They spread out around the central fountain, in formation as they had planned, a pentagon of guns facing outward. "Find the barber!" shouted Crawford, and Leon did not need to be told twice. With a running start, he leapt into the air, knocking a couple of zombies down with his wings as he stretched them out and they caught the wind, pulling him into the air.

His keen eyes searched the area around the square for the striped pole that would indicate the barber's shop. The gunfire continued below him, and he could smell the blood of the fallen zombies all around him. What was happening was a massacre, perpetrated not by the highly skilled agents, but by whatever people had thought it right to meddle with bioweapons, and had been stupid enough to let them leak. Then, just to the southeast of the square, Leon caught sight of the pole he was looking for. He angled his body, his heavy wings catching the air and bringing him downward to the building. He glanced into the window as he swooped by, and saw the sign, which read "Парикмахерская." That meant nothing to him, but the chairs and mirrors inside did. He circled back to the square, where he met up with his teammates, falling down upon them like an over-large bat from the dark sky.

"The barber is to the southwest," he said, the words raspy through his throat. Crawford held up a fist, indicating a cease in gunfire. The agents grouped together again around him.

"To the southwest," he said. The other agents nodded and arranged themselves back into the formation they had taken when first entering the small town. They worked their way out of the square much less deliberately than they had come in; they knew what was here, and their hearts were already beating with the thrill of the battle.

It was only a few moments before they arrived at the barber's shop. One of the agents walked forward from the group and tried the door, to find that it was unlocked. He held it open as the rest of the agents silently entered. They stood assembled in the middle of the shop, reloading their guns from extra clips tucked into their bulletproof vests. Helena glanced through the large front window of the shop to see only one or two zombies lumbering by. They didn't seem to be interested in the agents inside of the shop; they had stopped noticing them as soon as they couldn't directly see them. Those infected by the T-virus were many things, but overly perceptive was not one of them.

"I'll take the lead up the stairs," said Captain Crawford, checking his gun to make sure that it was reloaded and ready to go. "Harper, Malcom, Grant, you stay down here with Kennedy as our backup. Genarro and Hammond, you're with me." The two followed him through a door in the back of the shop, which they left open, and the three left behind could hear them going up the squeaking stairs in the back to the safe house above.

"Do you think we're going to find anything?" asked Malcom, leaning against one of the barber's chairs. "I mean, if something went wrong, there's a chance that nothing's salvageable."

"That's what we're here to find out, I suppose," said Grant. He scratched under his helmet with a finger.

There were gunshots upstairs, followed by a dull _thud._ The agents downstairs froze, tensed. Malcom's finger hovered over the trigger on his gun, ready. They listened for a moment, and heard nothing more.

"Should we go up?" asked Grant, his voice small. The agents didn't move, listening. Leon silently damned his mutation. He was equipped with many new abilities, but better hearing was not one of them. Helena looked to him, and to the other agents.

"Let's go," she said, resting her gun in the crook of her arm. "We either sit around her holding our dicks all night, and nothing's wrong, or something's wrong. We might as well check it out." She led the charge, going to the stairs. The other agents hesitated for a moment, but Leon followed her immediately, his hulking shape taking up more space than the doorway had to offer.

"Let's go," said Leon. Helena nodded, and she climbed the stairs. Malcom and Grant followed behind Leon.

The door at the top of the stairs was open, and Helena held her gun at the ready, pointed inward. She darted in, and Leon followed her, filling the doorway as a flash of light affronted his eyes. He raised an arm to block the light, but it was gone. Helena blinked away the light from her eyes. "Come out with your hands up."

"I don't think so," came a feminine voice from behind the clearing glare. "Because you're not the only one with a gun." Leon swept his hand against the light switch by the door, illuminating the room. A wooden table was knocked over on its side, papers and a briefcase scattered around it. Some matching wooden chairs were strewn about as well. The forms of two of the B.S.A.A. agents were in a lump on the floor to the left of the door, and a third was slumped in one of the chairs, seemingly unconscious. Standing in the middle of the chaos was a tall, smiling woman with long brown wavy hair, a digital camera in one hand, and a semiautomatic machine gun pointing directly at them in the other.

Grant and Malcom stood behind Leon in the doorway, frozen. "Holy shit," said Malcom. "That's Jessica Sherawat."


	3. Chapter 3

Jessica smiled. "I see my reputation precedes me." She took a step forward, and Leon bared his teeth. "Easy, boy," she said. "Wouldn't want a bullet in your handler, here." She nodded toward Helena. Leon's eyebrows furrowed. "You two. You drop your guns out here and come on in. And _you_," she said, looking to Leon. "Get out of the door. Out or in." She looked to Helena. "My dogs are the same way. I know how it is."

Leon glared daggers at the woman, but maneuvered his way through the doorway and moved toward Helena. "Ah-ah-ah," said Jessica, indicating the gun she held with her camera hand. "You go stand over there by the other B.S.A.A. peons." Leon scowled and shuffled over to where the two agents, who he could now see were Genarro and Hammond, lay on the floor. He could smell the metallic tang of their blood, and didn't have to stoop down and check to know that they were already dead. He kept his eyes trained on Jessica. Grant and Malcom joined him, their hands held up in surrender.

"You want to drop the gun, too?" asked Jessica, her eyes on Helena's gun.

"Hell no," said Helena, her eyes locked on the other woman. "This is the only reason you haven't killed us all already."

Jessica chuckled. "It's not the only reason," she said, taking another step forward. "Because there's still something I need from you, before I can get out of here."

"What could you want from us?" asked Helena, her eyes narrowing.

"The name of this lug over here," she said, jutting the thumb of her hand that held the camera. "The people that I sell this picture to," she indicated the camera she held, "are going to need more than just a photo to believe that the B.S.A.A. is working with their sworn enemy." She paused for a moment, then: "Or is it 'the people who I sell…'? Whatever, it doesn't matter."

"You want to release information about the B.S.A.A. working with…" Helena wasn't about to slip up for this woman. "…with him? Why the hell would you want to take down the B.S.A.A.?"

"Me?" Jessica asked. "I don't want to take down the B.S.A.A. I used to work for them! That was before _you_, I think. But even if I don't have any beef with them, there are a lot of people who _do_. And they'd be willing to pay plenty of cash for the kind of information that might take down the whole organization." She slid the camera into her pocket. "So tell me, what's the bioweapon's name?"

"Don't tell her!" exclaimed Grant. "She fucked us over in the Mediterranean, and she can't be trusted."

"Oh, save it," said Jessica. "I think we've established that you can't trust me." She gestured with her hands as she spoke. "What with the whole 'I'm going to sell the information' thing."

She might have had more to say, but she didn't get to say it, because Leon had sprung while she gestured, for the split second her gun was not trained on his partner. Jessica cried out as she was knocked to the floor, the gun skittering away, out of her hand. Leon pinned her down, his back claws pinning her at the ankles and his front claws on her wrists. He opened his mouth and let out a screech, his sharp fangs glistening with saliva. The wings on his back opened a bit, though the room would only allow so much, making him seem even larger. His chest heaved with heavy breaths, his dull yellow eyes trained on Jessica's, which were wide with fear.

"Leon!" Helena grabbed ahold of his arm and tried to pull him off of the woman, but he was too strong for her. She took a step back.

Leon could hear Helena, but he barely registered her presence. The woman beneath him, she was the one who had threatened his partner. He pulled back his claw, and felt someone's hands on his arm, but he ignored them and swung down, leaving deep scratches on the woman's face. Then, heard, louder:

"_Leon!_" Helena screamed this time, grabbing ahold of his arm and pulling it back before he could do more damage. He let her pull him back, and staggered a few steps away from the woman on the ground. She was bleeding, far worse now, it pooling around her cheek on the floor. Helena glanced down at her and for a moment, her hand went to the small first aid pack that was tucked into a pocket on her bulletproof vest. Instead, however, she turned to Leon.

"What the hell do you think you were doing?" she asked. Leon did not meet her eyes. "You neutralized her, yes, and that's great, a gold star for you. But for a minute there—" Helena shook her head. "You know what it was like when we brought you back from Lanshiang, with the restraints…" She brushed the hair out of her face and grabbed Leon's face, making him look her in the eyes. "We worked hard to get you out here in the field, okay? And I don't want you locked up like an animal again." She let go of his face, and this time, he didn't look down. "Don't scare me like that again."

"I've got the camera," said Grant, slipping it into one of the pockets in his jacket. Malcom had gone over to Captain Crawford, who was the agent slumped in the chair.

"He's alive," he said, fingers pressed to the man's neck. "Just unconscious. She must've been planning on interrogating him." Helena nodded, and knelt down next to Jessica. The wounds on her face had already begun to stop bleeding. The gentle rise and fall of her chest let Helena know that she was still alive.

"Do either of you have your medkits?" she asked. "We're going to need more than what I've got to block up these wounds."

"They are dead," said Leon, pointing at the other two agents, by the door. They had forgotten about them in all of the excitement, and a certain grim veil fell upon them.

Helena breathed a sigh. "We'll extract their bodies with the information," she said, turning back to Jessica. "Be sure that they can get a funeral and such. They haven't been infected, so we can afford, at least, to give them that." Helena opened her first aid kit and found the gloves and gauze. She pulled on the gloves, and began to dab at the wounds.

While she did this, she did not notice Jessica's fingers grasping at something in her pocket, pulling the syringe out, maneuvering it around. She only noticed when Jessica's sudden arm movement injected it into her thigh. "Ah!" she cried out, and Jessica's eyes shot open.

"That's the T-virus," she said, a grotesque smile on her disfigured face. "Because I'm not about to get one-upped like a naïve bitch like you."


	4. Chapter 4

"Ah!" Helena cried out, lurching back, away from the bleeding woman on the ground. The syringe stuck in her thigh, flopping as she scrambled backward. The plunger was depressed, and the needle was buried deep into her leg, through her pants. She cringed as her fingers wrapped around the cylinder and pulled it out, clenching it in her fist. "God damn it."

Leon pressed a large, gnarled and clawed foot over Jessica's chest, holding her down. Grant rushed over to Helena, catching her under her arms. "Are you okay?" he asked, helping her to her feet. She stood, wobbled for a moment, but then stood strong. She jammed a hand into a pocket and fished around.

"I'll be fine," she said. "I think." She found the evidence bag she was looking for and dropped the syringe into it, sealed it, and stowed it away. Then, she glared down at the woman on the floor. She let out a scoffing laugh, and turned away, strolling back toward the door. "You think you're pretty clever, don't you, Jessica?"

Jessica's grin had now faded from her face. She felt the force of Leon's foot holding her down, and she understood Helena's confidence was probably the result of something that would throw a wrench in her plans. She gave a cough, and she wasn't sure if the blood in her mouth was from that or from the deep scratches in her cheek. Despite this, she managed to reply. "Actually, yes."

"And you left the B.S.A.A. when?" she asked.

"What was it, oh five?" asked Malcom, gathering some of the papers from the floor of the room. He had retrieved the brown suitcase.

"That sounds about right," said Helena. "Because if you left then, that would have been right _before_ WilPharma first synthesized the vaccine for the T-virus." She turned and came back to Jessica, kneeling down to better speak to her. "And it was also the time when all active anti-bioterror agents were vaccinated against the virus."

"But WilPharma went down right after the Harvardtown disaster," said Jessica. "There's no way the vaccines could have gotten out that quickly!"

"Maybe the company went down," said Helena, "but not the vaccine. It was too valuable—and it's been eight years. That's plenty of time for us to get some shots." Malcom stood up from his crouch, all of the papers gathered. Grant checked his watch.

"Helena," he said, "we've got about an hour before they abandon the perimeter for sanitation. We should get going." Helena stood and moved away from Jessica, allowing Grant to take her place. From a pocket in his vest, he produced a pair of zip ties. He turned to Leon. "Leon, you're going to have to let me get her up."

Leon nodded, and slowly removed his foot. Helena trained her gun on Jessica, and Grant grabbed her shoulder, helping her to sit upright. He went behind her and pushed her arms together, pulling the zip ties around them. As he did this, though, she popped upward with her knees, ramming her shoulder into Grant's nose. He staggered backward, blood spilling out of his nose. He put a hand to his face and ran back at her, bending his knees to tackle her.

"Get out of the way!" shouted Helena. She stared down her gun, trying to get a clear shot at Jessica's legs to incapacitate her, but Grant was between her and her target. Leon took a step toward her, and Jessica turned, hitting the window with her shoulder and breaking through the glass. She tucked herself inward and rolled into the street, absorbing some of the impact. Helena ran to the window, firing a few shots after the woman as she darted between some of the buildings and disappearing into the darkness. Helena lowered her weapon. "God damn it!"

She took a step back to look at what was left of the rest of her team, and Leon barreled past her, breaking the window further, expanding its opening to accommodate for his large size. As soon as he was free of the confines of the building, his wings unfurled and caught the cold, early morning air. He swooped down into the street, and scanned his surroundings for where she could have gone to. She was wounded, and had just fallen two stories—there was only so far that she could have made it.

"Leon!" Helena called from the pulverized window. His head snapped around to see her. "Let her go!" continued Helena. "We need to get out of here before sanitation." Leon's eyes, wild for the chase, softened, and he trudged back to the barber's shop, knocking a zombie that tried to come up to him back down to the cobbled pavement with his wing.

When Leon made it back to the room, Malcom had the unconscious Captain Crawford leaning against him, their arms interlocked at the shoulder. Grant held a hand to his broken nose, which had stopped bleeding but had begun to swell. They had dragged the bodies of their fallen teammates to the middle of the room. "Leon," said Helena, "you're going to have to carry those two out. They're too heavy for me if we're going to get clear in time."

"Okay," said Leon. He gathered the bodies up, one under each arm, and noticed that they were both still warm. A slight shiver trickled its way down his exposed spine. He turned to go down the stairs and through the barber's shop to get out, but realized that while carrying the bodies, he wouldn't be able to make it through the small doors. He let out a frustrated grunt and turned back to the battered window-hole. Using his large, clawed foot, the same foot he had used to hold down Jessica before, he kicked out some of the wall of the room, creating a bigger hole.

"We'll meet you down there," said Malcom, heading through the door with Crawford. Helena and Grant were right behind. Leon leapt out of the hole in the safe room wall, his powerful legs pushing him upward into the air, his wings opening wide to catch the wind. He pumped his wings once, to get himself clear of the rooftops of the buildings, and glided around, descending carefully into the street. There, he met up with the rest of his team.

They did not retrace their steps and go out of the town in the same way that they came in. The highest concentration of the infected was near the center of town, and so instead, they headed in the opposite direction, down the street, a straight shot from the safe house above the barber's shop to the perimeter the Russian authorities had created around the town.

Helena took up the front of the small convoy, firing shots as needed to keep the way clear of zombies, with Malcom and Leon right behind, who couldn't really fight back against the infected themselves, thanks to the loads they were carrying. Grant took up the rear, making sure to take out any zombies that threatened to catch up or attack from the sides.

Once they had made it to the edge of the town, they moved laterally, to the main road by which they had entered, and followed that to the perimeter and the officers waiting there just as the sun began to rise above the mountains on the horizon. The Russians were more than an little off-put by the image of Leon carrying two of his dead compatriots, but once Helena explained to them what had happened, they nodded and allowed the bodies to be covered and placed in the back of one of the trucks they had assembled for evacuation.

"We almost left without you," said the Russian officer who had met them earlier that night. "You cut it a little close."

"It always works out that way, doesn't it?" asked Malcom, who was bringing Crawford to another truck to load him into the cab.

"Davayte s"yekhat'!" shouted the officer, and he led Helena and Grant to his truck. "We'll want a full report, of course, filed with us as well as the B.S.A.A. It was our agent who was killed, remember."

"That shouldn't be a problem," said Helena. "We'll cooperate in any way that we can with your government." Leon climbed up into the bed of the truck, causing it to tilt slightly on its suspension. He settled down into sitting position and gave Helena a toothy smile through the back window of the cab. She couldn't help but grin back. She turned back to the officer. "But I must remind you, Special Agent Kennedy's involvement will not be a part of the released report, of course. And I'd ask you and your fellow officers to keep mum, as well." Though her words were cordial, her eyes narrowed, and the officer chuckled.

"Do I perceive a threat?" he asked.

"Not if you keep quiet," replied Helena, sitting back into her seat. The truck then was filled with a stale silence, and Grant shifted uncomfortably. In the back, Leon turned his head to watch the small town disappear into the background. He thought of the woman left behind, and realized that she would be there when the town burned. But that was okay, because it was her fault it was burning.


	5. Chapter 5

"So I suppose we should start this by thanking you," said Clive O'Brien, who sat down in the chair across the table from Captain Crawford and Helena. He had been brought in to debrief them, as it was a special circumstance. The apprehension of Jessica Sherawat was something he had pushed the B.S.A.A. and international community for years to achieve, and his work with that case prompted the director to bring him in. "The intelligence you've recovered will be vital in tracking bioweapon deals through Eurasia immensely." He clasped his hands, interlacing his fingers. "And, from what we've seen, Project Retribution has been successful."

"Thank you, Mr. O'Brien," said Helena, giving him a small smile. Crawford nodded, as well. They both waited, knowing that Clive had more to say to them. Clive gave them a thin smile and opened up the manila folder in front of him on the table.

"We've gotten your debriefings," he said, spreading the papers out in front of him. "And everything lines up. Special Agent Kennedy should, and don't let the higher-ups know I told you this, be approved for further missions." He slid the paper with a picture of Leon's mutated face underneath the others, and Helena's eyes caught sight of the small photo of him before his mutation that was paper clipped to the page. She almost winced. "And Captain Crawford," O'Brien continued, "let me just say that I am deeply sorry to hear about the loss of your men. I promise you that they have not died in vain. Their efforts have allowed us to continue toward the eradication of bioterror." Two more papers slid under the others, until one was left on top.

"Now, you know I'm not a normal face around here anymore," O'Brien continued, "because I am just on as an advisor. But tracking down former Agent Sherawat has been a project of mine for years, and I wanted to speak with you personally about her death."

Helena and Crawford glanced at each other, and then back at O'Brien. Crawford spoke: "She was subdued by Leon—or, rather, Special Agent Kennedy—but when Agent Grant attempted to restrain her, she broke his nose and got away. Special Agent Harper fired on her, and Special Agent Kennedy chased after her, but with sanitation imminent, we had no choice but to clear the area, and left her there."

"That's what we have here," said Clive, lifting the paper in front of him, seeing the photograph of his former agent. "But you must understand, we have to be sure." A pause. "The camera that you brought back was empty—no memory card, and only two pictures on the internal memory, one of the empty safe house, and another black, like it went off in a pocket or something. That makes us question her real intentions there. Like had she really had knowledge of Project Retribution, or was she simply trying to bluff her way out of a tricky situation.

"Whatever it was, we won't have a way to find out." He placed the paper down in the folder, glancing at the two agents across the table from him. "According to your report, she was wounded, and had fallen two stories before she got away. We've ran through the possibilities—there's no way that she could have gotten out of the blast zone in time." He paused. "We're classifying her as deceased."

Clive clasped his hands again, and shifted in his seat before continuing. "What we are not sure of is what she was doing there. None of the files the Russian agent had retrieved mentioned her, or any of her known aliases. I've spoken with your superiors, and they have decided to assign you, Captain Crawford, to the investigation. And, if you're interested, you and Special Agent Kennedy would be asked to assist, as well, Special Agent Harper. The role you've played in Project Retribution has been vital—the B.S.A.A. would love to keep you on." He opened his hands, welcoming them to the suggestion. "What do you say?"

Helena smiled. She glanced at Captain Crawford, and made eye contact with Clive. "Yes, Mr. O'Brien," she said. "I say yes."

In what used to be a small town about fifty miles outside of Moscow, the metal ring at the center of a solid door in the ground moved minutely. Some dust slipped off of it and settled. Then, it moved again, this time rotating more, slowly at first, then faster, until it stopped, the dust on it settling. Then the whole door, heavy as it was, began to move upward. Some of the dirt around the door slipped through the opening, but the door opened slowly, and then reached vertical, and it fell to rest on the ground next to the opening.

A figure drew itself out of the hole, an arm covering the figure's eyes to shade them from the afternoon sun. When the arm was withdrawn, four red scratches shone with contrast to the pale face they reached across. The woman pushed her hair out of her face and stepped up the stairs out of the bomb shelter, originally built in the 1950s for fear of a nuclear detonation. The detonation it withstood was not nuclear, but it served its purpose.

Jessica Sherawat reached into her pocket and withdrew two things. One of these things was her pair of sunglasses, which she placed on her damaged face. The other was a small blue memory card. She smiled. "So Project Retribution is in effect," she murmured to herself. "I have a feeling I'll be seeing a lot more of this Special Agent Leon…" Despite the scratches, a wide smile pulled across her face.


End file.
